


Half An Hour

by Tarlan



Series: Half An Hour [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-28
Updated: 2005-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John is left in charge of Atlantis while Elizabeth takes a well-deserved break on the mainland, all hell lets loose within moments of her departure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half An Hour

**Author's Note:**

> The SGAHC Challenge: Weir has left Atlantis for some reason or another and has placed Sheppard at the helm.  
> 1\. 3,000 words MAX. No long drawn out chapter stories - OOPS - FAILED THAT PART. Hope nobody minds though :-)  
> 2\. Points for each whump, use of a still or homemade alcohol, most creative party (writer''s discretion: could be a single individual or many), recognizable movie/tv moment or line, and finally, how about an unexpected occurrence.  
> 3\. Bonus points: Somehow, if you can slip an H/C moment into the melee, you deserve bonus points.

"You need a break," said Carson, putting down his stethoscope and eyeing her gravely.

Elizabeth sighed but even that breath held so much fatigue that it came out heavy and apathetic. He felt for her. Leadership was a weight around his shoulders just through maintaining the rank of Chief Medical Officer on this expedition. He knew how much harder it had to be carrying the weight of the entire expedition, with each death, each injury, each battle fought and sometimes lost, bearing down upon her. They had lost good people to the wraith, the Genii, and to the dangers lurking in this lost city. Too many good people. Decisions had been made that, in hindsight, probably were not the best but were all they could afford at the time. Elizabeth had been forced to bear the weight of those decisions, for right or wrong.

"A break," she quoted back softly.

"Why don't you fly out to the mainland and spend a little time with Halling. You said you wished you'd had more time to get to know the Athosians." Carson looked at her askance. "Just a couple of days away from all the pressure, accepting the hospitality of a _very_ generous people," he added.

Elizabeth looked thoughtful. Then a shine came to her eyes. "That's not such a bad idea. I'll only be half an hour away by jumper, and if I stand down the off-world teams and stop all searches of the city for a couple of days then there won't be anything to worry over." Her eyes clouded over. "Perhaps Rodney could come along--"

"Ah...no," interrupted Carson quickly. "I know the man needs a break after his brush with that nanovirus...and losing a number of his people did not do him any favors but, do you really think you'd get some quality rest with Rodney whining all night about sleeping on moss and dry leaves, and moaning about the poor sanitary arrangements?"

Elizabeth had to smile, just as he intended, knowing she could imagine Rodney's reaction to staying in the Athosian camp just as well as he could, especially if a comfortable bed was only a half an hour away by jumper. How Sheppard managed not to strangle Rodney when they stayed overnight on some godforsaken planet was a mystery to Carson. He'd experienced it only once, on one of his rare off-world ventures, and listening to Rodney moaning right up until he dropped off soundly and then as soon as he woke was enough to raise anyone's blood pressure. After that mission, Carson had taken to checking the rest of the team's blood pressure before and after their off-world trips. Strangely enough, none of them seemed particularly stressed from being with Rodney. It had to be a bloody miracle; either that or they'd built up immunity.

"Point taken," Elizabeth stated with a smile, "But, perhaps Teyla would care to join me."

"Aye, now that's a better idea. I'm sure the lass would love to spend a little more time with her people."

Elizabeth pursed her lips and nodded, her eyes still shining. "Okay, I'll make arrangements to hand everything over to Major Sheppard for a couple of days. In fact, I'll stand down all nonessential personnel from duty for a couple of days."

Carson rocked on his heels as she left the infirmary with a bounce in her step, pleased with his suggestion.

**--**

Although he had agreed to let Stackhouse fly her to the mainland, John walked Elizabeth and Teyla to the shuttle, listening and nodding as Elizabeth went through a list of _dos and don'ts_.

"The archaeologists want to study the main computer control crystals in the gate room but tell them to wait until Rodney's there to supervise."

"Okay," he drawled.

"And Simpson wants to overhaul the transporter system but make sure she only does one booth at a time."

"One at a time."

"And don't let Kavanagh interface his laptop into the main computer without checking with Rodney first."

"Right. No to Kavanagh unless Rodney says it's okay."

"Oh...and--"

"Elizabeth. I think I can handle Atlantis and its geeks for a couple of days," John stated in exasperation, wondering if she would be moving on to telling him to ensure everyone wore clean underwear and tidied up their labs each night.

She looked at him, her eyes widening. "Maybe this trip isn't such a good idea."

"It's a great idea," he said, emphasizing the 'great' and delivering a megawatt smile of reassurance that only seemed to make Elizabeth look even more worried. "What could go wrong?" As soon as those words left his mouth he knew they were a mistake and he covered quickly, "And if anything _should_ go a little...off...color then I can have you back here in half an hour."

"Right," she mumbled to herself before looking straight at him. "Right," she stated a little stronger, as he subtly maneuvered her into the jumper where Stackhouse was already prepping for take off while Teyla took a seat. "Oh...Dr. Murphy was concerned about the ventilation in the Commissary area. Ask Rodney to send someone down there to check it out."

"I will."

As the ramp began to rise, Elizabeth called out again. "Oh, and John..." He raised both eyebrows. "Take care of our people."

"Be safe," he called out with a grin, using her customary farewell expression, and he saw her smile in response before the ramp hid her from view. Within moments the ceiling opened on command and the puddle jumper began to ascend, quickly darting off once it cleared the jumper bay, and John sighed happily.

Whistling tunelessly, he headed back to the control room, briskly taking the stairs from the jumper bay--and froze halfway down at the sight and sound from below. A dozen not-so-familiar geeks were milling about the control room with parts of the Stargate control panel in their scrabbling hands, arguing over who should have which piece.

"What's going on?"

A blond-haired, Nordic-looking guy, built like a haystack, turned towards John. "Dr. Weir agreed to let us study the control panel hieroglyphics when the Stargate was next inactive."

"Inactive?"

"A two-day stand down of all off-world missions translates as inactive."

"Dr. Weir is not here--"

"Exactly. Perfect time for us to make our study and--"

"Now hang on. I'm in charge here and I say when you can...Hey, be careful with that," John yelled as one archaeologists grappled with another for one of the larger crystals; it fell to the floor with a hollow clunk that did not sound good.

Grodin was on his knees beside the crystal in an instant. Even from here, John could see the fracture running through it and closed his eyes in dismay as Grodin began prodding at the part gingerly, only to curse loud and hard as the piece broke in two and gashed the palm of his hand between the index and middle finger. Blood gushed from the cut, droplets spraying in all directions as Grodin grabbed his hand and began shaking it violently as if that would stop the pain. John grabbed at Grodin's hand but decided against binding the cut when he saw the sliver of crystal sticking out. He tapped his ear piece.

"Medical emergency to the control room. We got a gusher."

After a full minute had passed, John tapped his ear piece again. "Where the hell are you, Beckett?"

Only to look around as Carson came running in, carrying his portable medkit, with his face red, breath wheezing. "Bloody transporters...not working."

"What?" John felt horror creeping through him. He glanced at the schematic of the city and noticed the entire transportation system was out of action. "Simpson," he murmured, then louder, "Get me Dr. Simpson."

He watched as Carson set to work on Grodin's hand, wincing as he worked out the sliver before flushing the wound and checking for anything more buried in there. "In a moment, we'll get you to the infirmary, laddie, and put a wee stitch or two in that hand."

John heard Simpson through his radio and answered. "Dr. Simpson...the transporters are off line."

"I'm overhauling the system--"

"All of them? At the _same_ time?"

"Well...I thought it would be just a matter of powering them down and then back up again but the reinitialization sequence seems to be failing. Perhaps you should come down to the Commissary transporter booth and--"

"I'm on my way."

John glared at the archaeologists, pointing a finger at them and at the haystack in particular. "Nobody touches another crystal." He let his hand drop to the 9mm sidearm just for emphasis, watching as a dozen geeks swallowed nervously. "Message received," he murmured as he raced out, forgoing the transporter booth that would have taken him there in seconds--if it had been operating.

**--**

Rodney frowned as he glared at the schematic on his laptop, trying to figure out where the fault lay. Simpson had contacted him the moment she ran into difficulties with the transporter system. Despite her incompetence in disabling the whole system rather than test out her work on a single booth first, she had risen in his estimation purely for recognizing that he was the best person to go to for help...and for doing so promptly. He shuddered, imagining how long it would have taken if Kavanagh had been given the task of overhauling the transporters and wondering if someone _could_ get their molecules permanently scrambled in one of those--as Carson pointed out every time he was forced to use one.

He smiled. If Sheppard was Captain Kirk then Carson was their Dr. McCoy.

"Which makes me Spock," he murmured approvingly, finding no fault with being considered highly logical and super intelligent.

The rest of his mouth rose to straighten out his crooked smile as he saw the problem from Simpson's diagnostics of the Commissary booth. Tinkering with the panel had dislodged a crystal. While that crystal was not in proper alignment, anyone using that transporter would end up with their innards on the outside of their bodies. Fortunately, the Ancients had built in safety protocols to prevent that happening, hence the inability to reinitialize the system.

"So long as no one is stupid enough to countermand that protocol," he mumbled and was about to tap his ear piece to pass along the necessary instructions to Simpson when all the lights went out, plunging him into pitch black.

"What now?" He tapped his ear piece. "Grodin? What's going on?"

"I'm in the dark, too, McKay...literally. I'm not in the control room."

"What?"

"There was an accident...and I'm partway to the infirmary with Dr. Beckett. Except...we don't know where the infirmary is anymore."

"Just...Just stay where you are. I'll try to get the lights back on from here."

Rodney grumbled as he booted up the laptop on battery power but at least it illuminated the room around him. He had specifically chosen this lab to work from because it had full access to the Atlantis mainframe but every attempt to interface was met with darkness. Someone--or something--had sent the main computer back into sleep mode and only somebody with a strong version of the ATA gene would get it back up online again. Fortunately, he had the gene in sufficient strength, admittedly it was artificially derived but the Ancient devices did not seem to notice the difference so who was he to grumble. However, initialization of the main computer could only be attempted at the console in the control room.

Rodney picked up his laptop and headed out of the laboratory, using the meager light from the screen as a torch because he had stupidly put the real torch back into stores after one of Elizabeth's _nagging_ sessions about returning items not currently in use. As he walked through the darkened corridors, people loomed out of the pitch black, faces losing their terror when they saw it was just him.

"I thought maybe the wraith had attacked," sobbed one female scientist whose name he could never remember. Perhaps if she'd had cropped blond hair and big...brains, he thought, but he was certain she was one of the soft sciences. Musicology or philosophy or something like that.

She gripped hold of his arm tightly, almost dislodging the laptop, and fell in step beside him as he pushed onwards, unable to shake her death grip on his arm. By the time he reached the end of the first corridor, Rodney was exasperated by the number of others who now followed him like he was the Pied Piper of Hamlin but without the music...or the funny costume. They clung onto to each other like the blind leading the blind, and the constant jerking as one or another stumbled in the darkness, tripping over the feet of the person next to him or her, was doubly annoying, threatening to send everyone sprawling, including him.

"Perhaps we should sing a little song to keep up our spirits," came a voice from the back.

Rodney froze in horror, and then turned quickly to face the crowd behind him. "Yes. Let's all sing a little song. How about one from _The Darkness_ , or _Thriller_ so we can all imagine zombies lying in wait in the corridor ahead of us."

"Rodney! That's not very reassuring," came a familiar Scot's brogue.

"Ah, Carson! Not only didn't you get very far from the control room but your sense of direction is worse than Major Sheppard's."

"Och! All these corridors look the same even with the lights on."

"Talking of Major Sheppard. Where is he?"

"Left a few minutes before we did. He went off to initialize the transporter in the Commissary."

"What?!"

Rodney shoved the laptop into the hands of the man who had been holding onto his jacket for the long walk in the dark. He pressed his radio several times calling for Sheppard, who remained silent.

"Major, if you can hear me, do _not_...I repeat, do not initialize and use the transporter."

"Rodney?"

Rodney turned to Carson and swallowed hard, hands wringing. "You know how you're always worrying about your molecules being scrambled permanently?"

"Bloody hell. Someone better go stop the Major."

"As long as the city's dead, he's safe...unless his attempt to use the transporter resulted in a major shutdown of all primary and secondary and tertiary systems like a cascading--"

"Rodney!"

"No...The quaternary systems would override the--"

"Rodney!"

"What?"

"Maybe Kavanagh knows what happened."

"Kavanagh? Why would Kavanagh..?" Rodney frowned. "Oh no. Please don't tell me you saw Kavanagh in the control room?"

"Okay, I won't tell you that I saw him heading towards that big monitor in the control room as we were leav--"

Rodney grabbed the laptop back off the man and charged off, leaving everyone racing after the light but stopped when he heard the cries as people went sprawling over each other in the darkness. He turned and shone the laptop towards them, giving them enough light to get back onto their feet and help others up, waiting impatiently, tapping his foot as his entourage grabbed hold of him tightly--again--waiting for him to lead the way onwards.

The sound of singing from a dozen voices up ahead sent chills through Rodney and he shuddered as he recognized a very bad rendition of Madonna's Holiday. Rodney breathed a sigh of relief when he reached the control room, having half expected to find everyone drunk on Athosian moonshine, having a party in his absence. He ordered everyone to shut up, sit down and stay down unless he said otherwise. The figure rising up from the darkness behind the main console was so wan and drawn, and with lank hair hanging loose from his customary pony tail Rodney thought it was a wraith. He juggled the laptop as he went for the 9mm that was _not_ strapped to his thigh, only then realizing that the wraith was, in fact, Kavanagh...and he wished he had found his gun anyway. The supercilious look told Rodney that this man was the reason for them inhabiting a currently dead city.

"Good. You brought some light with you, McKay. Maybe I can fix this now."

"Touch it and die, Kavanagh."

Kavanagh bristled, standing to his full height and pulling his hair back off his face to hang down his back. "I know what I'm doing--"

"Well, that would be a first." Rodney stepped back as Kavanagh reached for Rodney's laptop. "Exactly what part of _touch it and die_ didn't you understand?" He shoved Kavanagh aside, set down the laptop and stared down at the main computer console, frowning when he noticed that most of the crystals had been moved...and one was missing.

"What?"

Movement drew his eye towards a mop of almost white blond hair and Rodney's eyes narrowed in suspicion as he recognized the leader of the archeology section. Only then did he spot the two broken halves of a crystal unit held together with a hair band, glinting back up at him in the light from the screen saver on his laptop.

"Which clumsy moron broke it? Ten thousand years. It survived here for ten thousand years before--"

"Rodney, this is not helping any. Can you fix the bloody thing or not?"

"Of course I can...just a matter of..." He dropped down under the console and began rummaging inside, using touch to guide him until he found the back-up crystal that could be programmed to replace the broken one. Clambering back onto his feet, he swatted away Kavanagh's hand as the man started to rearrange the control crystals incorrectly because he had failed to take into consideration the new crystal that needed to be programmed before it could be utilized.

Satisfied with what he could see, Rodney moved into sensor range for the mainframe monitor and was grinned broadly as the computer flashed on with a electronic _boing_. Touching the console lightly, his grin became pure evil as Kavanagh snorted in disgust because the gene therapy had not worked on him.

Lights began to flicker on, one by one, and Rodney grinned at the relieved faces until he recalled the next problem facing him. He tapped his ear piece again.

"Major Sheppard? Major? John?" Rodney chewed his lip worriedly when he gained no response to his call. "I'm heading down to the Commissary. Kavanagh? Don't touch anything else."

"You have no right--"

Footsteps heralded the arrival of several soldiers including Bates, who would have been caught on patrol on the far side of the occupied areas of Atlantis.

"Sergeant Bates, if he so much as looks at that console, shoot him."

Bates stared at Rodney for a second as if weighing up whether he wanted to take orders from a civilian other than Dr. Weir. "Yes, sir."

Kavanagh swallowed hard as Bates smiled menacingly and took a tighter grip on this P90, releasing the safety catch but Rodney did not stay around gloating. He had a missing Major to locate before the man managed to turn himself into pizza using the dangerously damaged transporter. He set off at a run with Carson right behind him.

**--**

John groaned as the lights flickered back on. He tried to sit up but his head felt groggy. He moved his hand to the back of his head and it came away wet with blood. Only then did he notice that the lights were back on. He rolled onto his side and saw Simpson lying on the ground next to him with her hair in disarray and face pinched. At that moment, the sound of pounding feet added to his pounding headache and he squinted up as Rodney dropped to his side, his eyes tight with fear and his hands reaching out to tap John's cheek gently.

"What the hell just happened?" John widened his eyes in surprise at the slur in his voice. Damn, but he must have hit his head hard, he thought incoherently.

Rodney had a funny mask over his mouth and nose that looked like something Beckett would wear...and sure enough, there was the good doctor, kneeling beside Simpson.

"Is her name Marge?" John asked.

"What?"

"Simpson...Is her name Marge?"

"You must have really hit your head hard if you think she in any way resembles a cartoon character," Rodney stated in a voice muffled by the mask but John could sense the relief lying beneath his terse words.

He saw Rodney contact someone via his ear piece, hearing mention of Kavanagh's name, which triggered a memory. "Rodney, Weir said don't let Kavanagh interface with the main comput--"

"Yes. Yes. Unfortunately, that advice has come a little too late to be of any use."

More people flooded into the Commissary, with one group led by Kavanagh heading for the kitchen area, reminding Sheppard that there was supposed to be a problem with the ventilation, while the second group, wheeling a couple of gurneys, went straight to Carson. He saw someone gently push Rodney aside and breathed in deeply as a mask pushed oxygen into his abused lungs. As they loaded him up onto the gurney, John could see Rodney heading for the transporter booth, fiddling with something inside the control panel before initializing the system. Carson balked when Rodney indicated towards him and his patients.

"It's perfectly safe now."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure...but, just to be certain, maybe we ought to send Kavanagh through first." John smirked at the quiver of a smile threatening to raise one corner of Rodney's mouth into his patented quirky smile.

"Rodney!" Carson exclaimed in horror, but then he sighed at the twinkle in Rodney's eyes, and maneuvered the first gurney inside, the one holding Simpson who had yet to regain consciousness. Carson froze along with Rodney as Weir's voice came through on all their radio sets, amplified by the communications dish they had placed on the mainland only a week back.

"Weir to Atlantis. Major Sheppard. I thought I'd check in to let you know I've just arrived on the mainland."

"Ah...Elizabeth. Major Sheppard is..." Rodney looked down and his eyes darkened in worry, "Indisposed at the moment. I'll pass the message along."

"Rodney? You sound a little...stressed."

"We've had..."

Carson began waving his hand fast and miming the word _NO_.

"Just a little distracted...power equations. I believe I can increase the power yield from the Naquadah--"

"Rodney, I realize how important this is but I thought we agreed you would take a few days rest."

"This is rest."

"Rodney."

"Fine. I'll close down my laptop and see if anyone brought _The Sixth Sense_ along. Never did get to see the ending to that one."

"Good." Her voice was warm and friendly. "See you in two days, Rodney."

"Fine. Goodbye. Thanks for calling." He ended, trying to lighten his voice, only to collapse in upon himself as soon as the connection closed.

John pulled the mask away from his face. "She's only been gone half an hour?" Rodney and Carson nodded morosely. "Then somebody prep me a jumper because I'm going for a long ride out there."

"What would be the point of that?"

"Rodney...in space, no one can hear you scream."

THE END


End file.
